Modern India: An Interpretive Anthology

Metcalf, Thomas R.

Macmillan

An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj

An Imperial Vision examines the relationship between culture and power expressed in the architectural forms the British employed in India. From the great monuments of New Delhi to the most obsure structures in dusty country towns, these buildings visibly represented in stone the choices the British made in politics as imperial rulers. Viewed together they enhanced the hold of the empire over the ruler and the ruled alike.

History

Asia

Oxford University Press

This set of essays written over a span of forty years from 1961 to 2002, examines the structure and working of the British Raj in India during the first half of Crown Rule (1858-1914). The essays are grouped under three general headings: land tenure and land policy, colonial architecture, and migration. Two themes dominate. One is an assessment of what the British thought they were doing in India, and second, how India ought to be ruled. In these essays, Thomas Metcalf examines British policies towards India and the way the British, as rulers, endeavoured to sustain and legitimate the imperial structure. He also explores the consequences of the ideas and policies as they affected the lives of ordinary Indians, from the landed elite to lowly policemen and labourers. Many of the essays- both those that examine policy and those that assess its consequences- take as a central turning point the revolt of 1857. The essays provide insight into varied ways in which the massive structure of the British Raj in India functioned in the heyday of empire. They give the reader some sense of the Raj as a functioning imperial government, and at the same time attempt to critically assess the various strategies that it devised to justify its rule.

Forging the Raj: Essays on British India in the Heyday of Empire

The magnificent buildings constructed by the British in India, many of which may still be seen by the traveller, did not spring simply from the fancy of the architects or from purely aesthetic or administrative concerns: Rather they embodied a vision the British had of themselves as rulers of India. An Imperial Vision examines the relationship between culture and power as expressed in the architectural forms the British employed in India. From the great monuments of New Delhi to the most obscure structures in dusty country towns these buildings visibly represented in stone the choices the British made in politics as imperial rulers. The author illustrates how, in the years after the uprising of 1857, the British constructed a vision of themselves not as mere foreign conquerors, but as legitimate, almost indigenous rulers, linked directly to the Mughals and hence to India's own past. In so doing they created the distinctive forms of so-called Indo-Saracenic architecture. For a half a century this building sustained a new ideology of empire. Yet this self-confidence could not endure forever. By the 1920s, despite the massive building projects underway on the plains of Delhi, the knowledge, and the power, that upheld the Raj had alike begun to slip away. An Imperial Vision, by its focus upon the relationships of culture and power that underlay the colonial order, throws light on the distinctive nature of late nineteenth-century imperialism, and more generally, on the way political authority takes shape in monumental architecture.

University of California Press

An innovative remapping of empire, Imperial Connections offers a broad-ranging view of the workings of the British Empire in the period when the India of the Raj stood at the center of a newly globalized system of trade, investment, and migration. Thomas R. Metcalf argues that India itself became a nexus of imperial power that made possible British conquest, control, and governance across a wide arc of territory stretching from Africa to eastern Asia. His book, offering a new perspective on how imperialism operates, emphasizes transcolonial interactions and webs of influence that advanced the interests of colonial India and Britain alike. Metcalf examines such topics as law codes and administrative forms as they were shaped by Indian precedents; the Indian Army's role in securing Malaya, Africa, and Mesopotamia for the empire; the employment of Indians, especially Sikhs, in colonial policing; and the transformation of East Africa into what was almost a province of India through the construction of the Uganda railway. He concludes with a look at the decline of this Indian Ocean system after 1920 and considers how far India's participation in it opened opportunities for Indians to be a colonizing as well as a colonized people.

Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920

An innovative remapping of empire, Imperial Connections offers a broad-ranging view of the workings of the British Empire in the period when the India of the Raj stood at the center of a newly globalized system of trade, investment, and migration. Thomas R. Metcalf argues that India itself became a nexus of imperial power that made possible British conquest, control, and governance across a wide arc of territory stretching from Africa to eastern Asia. His book, offering a new perspective on how imperialism operates, emphasizes transcolonial interactions and webs of influence that advanced the interests of colonial India and Britain alike. Metcalf examines such topics as law codes and administrative forms as they were shaped by Indian precedents; the Indian Army's role in securing Malaya, Africa, and Mesopotamia for the empire; the employment of Indians, especially Sikhs, in colonial policing; and the transformation of East Africa into what was almost a province of India through the construction of the Uganda railway. He concludes with a look at the decline of this Indian Ocean system after 1920 and considers how far India's participation in it opened opportunities for Indians to be a colonizing as well as a colonized people.

Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (Volume 4)

Ancient Civilizations

Thomas Metcalf's fascinating study examines the ways the British sought to legitimate their rule over India. He demonstrates that the principles the British devised incorporated contradictory visions of India, yet together they made the authority of the Raj lawful. Students of modern India and the British Empire will find this book relevant and accessible.

Ideologies of the Raj (The New Cambridge History of India)

Cambridge University Press

Ideologies of the Raj The New Cambridge History of India, Volume 3, Part 4~

Arts & Photography

A Concise History of India (Cambridge Concise Histories)

In a challenging new history of modern India, the authors explore the imaginative and institutional structures that have changed and sustained the country. While previous histories have been composed as handmaids of British nationalism or as products of emerging nationalist identities, this book challenges the notion that a continuous meaning can be applied to social categories such as "caste," "Hindu," "Muslim," or even "India,". An initial chapter focuses on the period of Muslim dynasties that preceded colonial conquest, while the final chapter analyzes the dramatic recent events of the 1990s, including economic change, religious nationalism and India's emergence as a nuclear power. Illustrations and quotations from historical sources are integral to the narrative. Thomas R. Metcalf is Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley. His previous books inlcude An Imperial Vision (California, 1989) and Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1997). Barbara Metcalf is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. She is the editor of Making Muslim Space in North America (University of California Press, 1996).

Metcalf, Barbara D.

In a challenging new history of modern India, the authors explore the imaginative and institutional structures that have changed and sustained the country. While previous histories have been composed as handmaids of British nationalism or as products of emerging nationalist identities, this book challenges the notion that a continuous meaning can be applied to social categories such as "caste," "Hindu," "Muslim," or even "India,". An initial chapter focuses on the period of Muslim dynasties that preceded colonial conquest, while the final chapter analyzes the dramatic recent events of the 1990s, including economic change, religious nationalism and India's emergence as a nuclear power. Illustrations and quotations from historical sources are integral to the narrative. Thomas R. Metcalf is Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley. His previous books inlcude An Imperial Vision (California, 1989) and Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1997). Barbara Metcalf is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. She is the editor of Making Muslim Space in North America (University of California Press, 1996).

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Metcalf, Thomas R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Metcalf, Thomas R.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Metcalf, Thomas R.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Modern India: An Interpretive Anthology

An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj

Forging the Raj: Essays on British India in the Heyday of Empire

An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj

Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920

Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (Volume 4)

Ideologies of the Raj (The New Cambridge History of India)

Ideologies of the Raj The New Cambridge History of India, Volume 3, Part 4~

A Concise History of India (Cambridge Concise Histories)

A Concise History of India (Cambridge Concise Histories)